


nothing's gonna bring me down

by Fatale (femme)



Series: post episode ficlets [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Post-Episode: Season 3 Episode 2 The Powers that Be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 23:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14146689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: Alec dabbles in pottery.





	nothing's gonna bring me down

**Author's Note:**

> was reading a conversation on tumblr late last night about how alec needs to get hobbies and he should probably take up pottery. ha ha.

 

 

Alec passes a generic pottery class, must have passed something just like it a thousand times before without really seeing it. But Magnus has been teasing him so much about his “dabbling” in pottery, asking his opinions on a bunch of fancy pots, knowing good and well that Alec has no opinion, other than they are fancy and vaguely pot-shaped. It catches his eye, and he stops in the middle of the sidewalk to peer in the windows.

It’s mostly women and a few scattered families with children. No one looks especially artistically inclined or like an ancient Castilian trader, so Alec assumes they’re just regular people dabbling like him. How hard could it be?

Answer: really fucking hard.

After ducking out of work early enough to make the evening class and telling Magnus he’d be busy for the night, he slinks into the class and pays, feeling more like he’s buying illicit drugs than joining a class meant for young children.

First, he tries his hand at the pottery wheel, which is–-okay. His lump of wet clay entirely fails to be anything vase-like, no matter how many times he starts over and tries again. The best he manages is a wobbly misshapen bowl that Alec supposes could be used to hold a very large piece of soap or a frighteningly small amount of soup.

He notices the sun’s gone down, and he’s running out of time to finish. He gives up and hands it over to be fired.

For the less talented, there’s a wall of pre-made pottery that he can try to paint. He picks a horse because it looks dignified like something Magnus might have around his apartment. Then he grabs some black paint, gold, a little brown and just for kicks, red, because Magnus wears a lot of it.

Soon, Alec decides there’s something wrong with the brushes. His fingers, so used to handling his stele and arrows, seem totally unsuited to the small intricacies of painting ceramics. The horse looks inbred, decidedly non-pedigree, and _utterly deranged_.

Alec panics a little and tries to fix it by adding some red spots. Now, it looks deranged _and_ diseased. Alec drops the paintbrush and covers his mouth.

Next to him, a small child looks over at his horse and then shoots Alec a pitying look.

One of the employees comes back with his lumpy bowl-pot-vase and offers to let him paint it. Alec demurs from what is an obviously thinly-veiled attempt to embarrass him further, as her shoulders shake with laughter. Alec waits for them to finish firing his horse, is tempted multiple times to make a run for it, but he already paid and if nothing else, he’s practical.

He’s going home with his goddamn horse.

After it’s done, Alec declines to have it wrapped and instead, carefully folds his jacket around the pieces so he can smuggle them somewhere where they’ll never again see the light of day.

At the apartment, Magnus asks what’s in Alec’s jacket and though Alec is inclined to lie his way out, he’s awful at lying, and it’ll just give Magnus more ammunition when he inevitably finds out. 

Alec sighs and shamefully unwraps his horse and lumpy bowl.

He hands them to Magnus, who looks vaguely stunned. Alec gets it -- he was pretty stunned when he saw what his hands had made, too. Felt a little like being stabbed with a seraph blade.

Magnus’ left eyebrow twitches. “You made these?”

“I did,” Alec confirms, feeling his face heat unpleasantly.

“They’re lovely,” Magnus says with a straight face.

Alec can feel his mouth pull up into a grin. They’re objectively awful, probably the worst things to have ever left the studio, and Alec saw someone leave with a hot pink teacup shaped like an acorn. But it’s sweet of Magnus to pretend. “You can tell me the truth,“ Alec says. “They’re both terrible and I am not, nor should I ever again, try pottery.”

Magnus’ face splits into a wide smile, one of Alec’s top ten favorite expressions. Top five, top whatever, he loves them, loves all of his expressions, honestly. “I have confidence you’ll improve,” Magnus says.

“I’m not going back,” Alec tells him and sits down. “I don’t think they’d let me. They seemed embarrassed that I could be seen from the window. Employees kept sweeping the floor in front of me to block me from street view.”

"Maybe the floor was dirty?" Magnus tries.

"I was working over a rug. They were sweeping the rug. For _hours_."

“We’ll find you someplace else then,” Magnus says easily, joining him on the couch. He sets the pieces on the table. He leans over and kisses Alec lightly, then again, deeper, and then they’re not thinking of pottery at all.

Alec honestly forgets about it, thinks that’s the end of his misadventures in ceramics until he wakes up the next morning. He tugs on his t-shirt and wanders through the apartment to find Magnus. 

He stops when he sees the shelf where Magnus keeps his most prized possessions. Alec’s heart speeds up a little and he grins. That man. Nestled right between Magnus’ delicate 18th century Ming Vase and painted Calabrian Mask, are Alec’s horse and ugly bowl, displayed proudly like they’re both treasures, too.

 


End file.
